Unequal Responses to Inequality: The Structure and Origins of Redistributive Preferences across Advanced Democracies

An important aspect of politics is “who gets what”. That is, redistributive politics and economic (in)equality play an important role in advanced democracies. While scholars pay ample attention to the relationship between inequality and redistribution, we know relatively little about how this relates to citizens. This study begins to fill this empirical gap by engaging in a twofold analysis of the structure and origins of redistributive preferences across advanced democracies. First, we examine if, when and how the redistributive preferences differ across income groups. A time-series cross-sectional analysis of data on aggregate redistributive preferences from seven advanced democracies (1980s-2017) rejects the common notion of parallel movement between issue publics and establishes a more heterogeneous change pattern between these groups. We subsequently scrutinise the origins of the redistributive preferences of different income groups by relating them to inequality. Here, we focus on how middle- and higher-income strata respond to inequality, and what the ramifications are in terms of democratic representation. What role does inequality play in explaining redistributive preferences and the preference gap between income groups? Altogether, these two components allow for critical empirical insights into the democratic puzzle of one of the most salient societal domains, namely redistribution.